Which led to Rush’s “Xanadu,” possibly my (Chris) favorite of their songs. If you’ve never heard it, can tolerate prog rock, and have eleven-odd minutes to spare check it out. I’ll be over here rocking out hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEuOoMprDqg

Aubrey Morris, this episode’s Duncan, appears as the Roman emperor in this episode of The Prisoner - “The Dance of the Dead.” Once you’ve watched that Rush video spend 40 minutes checking this out too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaCVzUy3KP4

Here’s our first pass at the prestige 10 episode breakdown for season 2. Much of this didn’t survive contact with the discussion we have in this episode but it was a starting point.

The zones of total exclusion thing came from the French Zone Rouge, an area of France entirely incapable of supporting life because of damage from World War 1. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge

Mode Training is a philosophical/quasi-religious doctrine from David Gerrold’s “War Against the Chtorr” series. It is intended to let individuals move beyond human psychologies. The founder of the movement writes under the pseudonym of “Solomon Short.” Make of that what you will.

Somehow we had a whole conversation about religion and spirituality in sci-fi without mentioning either incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. You should probably be listening to a better podcast.

In the 13th century Pope Innocent IV sent a letter to Guyuk, Khan of the Mongols, telling him that the Mongol forces should stop attacking Christendom and maybe even convert to Christianity.

Guyuk’s response to the Pope: "You must say with a sincere heart ‘We will be your subjects; we will give you our strength.’ You must in person come with your kings, all together, without exception, to render us service and pay us homage. Only then will we acknowledge your submission. And if you do not follow the order of God, and go against our orders, we will know you as our enemy."

This episode was recorded in the lobby of our hotel (because the godforsaken Hilton only saw fit to give me one chair in my room so we had to look elsewhere, and there was a 20,000 person game convention AND a Pride parade going on outside with about the same attendance, plus some kind of investment/retirement/MLM fleecing seminar in the hotel...some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!) so there’s some echo and noise from people walking by. I’ve done what I can with it but obviously it’s not as clean as a regular recording.

Jon’s top 5 episodes:

5) Acts of Sacrifice

4) And Now for a Word

3) In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum

2) The Long, Twilight Struggle

1) The Coming of Shadows

Chris’s top 5 episodes:

5) Knives

4) And Now for a Word

3) In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum

2) The Coming of Shadows

1) The Long, Twilight Struggle

Jon’s bottom 3 episodes:

3) Come the Inquisitor

2) The Long Dark

1) GROPOS

Chris’s bottom 3 episodes:

3) The Long Dark

2) Geometry of Shadows

1) Soul Mates

The discussion of the network forcing JMS to include a hotshot pilot (Warren Keffer) is apparently from the DVD commentary to “The Fall of Night.” http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Warren_Keffer

Charles Lindbergh’s America First Committee was ostensibly focused on keeping America out of the war, but Lindbergh himself and others were suspected of being Nazi sympathizers. Certainly his racial and anti-Semitic views were in line with a lot of what the Nazis were selling at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee

“From Hell” is an amazing comic series from Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell focusing on the Jack the Ripper murders and, Victorian society, and mystical geography of late 19th century London. Incredibly detailed, very challenging.

David Lee Roth’s “California Girls” The first minute or so of the video, before the song actually begins, has that same fisheye lens closeup technique we see in this video. It’s very unsettling in both contexts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMoLENWsSk

It it nearly impossible to find an article on whether the decision to use the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to bring a quicker end to World War II was the “right” decision without the article having a bias toward one answer or the other, or that doesn’t devolve into “you are all idiots!” So in the end you get a wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki One could easily spend a lifetime analyzing the rationale for that one decision.

Sense8 is (was) such a wonderful show, cut down too soon. Imagine if, like B5, JMS and the Wachowski sisters had gone into the show with a five-year story planned out and had gotten the chance to tell it.

“You’ve wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk” goes the line. The only show where the hosts laugh at their own jokes more than we do.

“Coming to you live from the Kingdom of Nye in the High Desert of the Great American Southwest” - the intro of the legendary Art Bell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Bell), who passed shortly before we recorded this episode. He wasn’t without his issues but there was no one like him and he defined a genre of radio - and possibly podcasting.